Centered by a Miracle: A True Story of Friendship, Football, & Life

By Robin Caldwell

Authors: Steve Rom and Rod Payne

Football is the game of life. Two opposing teams alternately play defense and offense; the offense’s job is to get the ball into the end zone for a touchdown and it’s the defense’s job to stop them from scoring.

The circumstances presented by life alternately require defensive and offensive moves. Victory is often contingent on how the game of life is played. Victory is also contingent on attitude.

Take, for example, a diagnosis of leukemia. The illness could either sideline you; maybe even cause permanent elimination from the game. Or, it can spur you to run for a touchdown, bypassing obstacles and tackles, to win.

Sportswriter Steve Rom decided to go for the win with the assistance of teammate and coach Rod Payne, a retired Super Bowl champ. Their often poignant and compelling story is chronicled in Centered by a Miracle: A True Story of Friendship, Football, & Life(Sports Publishing).

Rom and Payne are an odd couple: One is slight of build, white and Jewish; the other is huge, black and Christian. Those dissimilarities were not enough to keep them from forging a lifelong friendship. However, there was one little difference that worried their friends and that was their occupations. Rom was a sports reporter, a supposed enemy to athletes like Payne. The two men ignored the unwritten rule of engagement to walk out a trusting bond that would ultimately benefit both on many levels.

When Rom developed persistent flu-like symptoms later diagnosed as leukemia, Payne walked away from his post-NFL job as the host of a sports radio program to care for his buddy. Payne’s method of care giving was an amalgamation of tough love, strategy and his motto, "Play to Inspire." Payne literally coached Rom through treatment, Rom’s resistance to treatment, and through the process of recovery. They played to inspire not only one another but others who bore witness to Rom’s miraculous recovery.

For his part, Rom’s gift to Rod Payne was the space to simply be himself, a space that allowed him to break stereotypes associated with being a jock and a Black man. And Payne was free to demonstrate his faith in Christ, a faith Rom now shares as a born-again believer.

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